


Love is a Strange Sunrise

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Blindness, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23907811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Jack is temporarily blinded in the line of duty. Peggy and Daniel take care of him.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa/Jack Thompson
Comments: 50
Kudos: 178
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Love is a Strange Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TiaNaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiaNaut/gifts).



It was not that Peggy _appreciated_ having to march up the stairs of four hospital floors, exactly. But at least, by the time she got to the room where they had directed her, she had burned off some of the excess agitation. Also, showing her SHIELD badge to a series of hospital personnel who insisted that she shouldn't be visiting patients at two in the morning had been very satisfying. The security guard at the bottom of the stairs had threatened to call her boss. He hadn't particularly liked Peggy's explanation that she _was_ the boss.

She paused at the door for a moment, straightened her jacket for no particular reason, and then realized she was stalling. Peggy knocked.

"Yeah, what?" Jack demanded, sounding irritable, and she relaxed a little.

"If you don't want visitors, I could leave. I'm sure there are several nurses who would be glad to see the back of me."

"Peggy," Jack sighed, a rush of mingled exasperation and fondness that she'd become quite familiar with, back when she worked for him rather than (technically) the other way around. Peggy opened the door.

Having prepared herself downstairs for what she would see, she found that it wasn't as bad as she had imagined. There were bandages across his eyes and down one side of his face. He was sitting up, leaning forward in bed. There was a radio beside the bed, but it was turned off, and it occurred to Peggy that she wasn't really sure what he had been doing before she showed up. Thinking, probably -- which in Jack's case usually spelled trouble.

"Are you making nurses cry, Peggy?" Jack said. The familiar devil-may-care smile pulled his mouth to one side; the bandage made it impossible for him to smile all the way. And that made her wonder how bad it really was under there, if he ever _would_ be able to smile normally again -- and her knees went a bit wobbly.

"Peggy?" Jack sounded alarmed when she didn't answer. "You're still there, right?" 

There was a slight crack in his voice at the end of the question -- he couldn't tell; for him, right now, he had to rely on other people to let them know when they entered a room. That kind of dependency must be terrible for him. Peggy took in a breath and straightened her spine. Honestly, _he_ was the one in the hospital; she hadn't any excuse for this ridiculous maundering.

"No, I flew across the country merely to say hello and then pop off to the airport again," she said, and Jack relaxed visibly. It was odd; there was something more expressive in his body language now that the expressiveness of his face was -- temporarily, at least -- hidden for the most part. It was as if, now that he could no longer see himself, some instinctive part of him had forgotten that other people could.

It made Peggy strangely embarrassed for him, and brought out an unexpected but powerful surge of tenderness, an urge to reach out that nearly overwhelmed her for a moment.

Instead, she sat on the straight-backed chair by the bed. It brought back too-intense memories of that _other_ hospital stay, years ago now ... actually, not just Jack, but also sitting in a chair by Daniel's bedside while he recovered from Midnight Oil. But at least with Daniel, it had been only one night. With Jack, it was an endless series of them.

He must be thinking of it too, she thought. He could hardly _not_ think of it, with bandages over his eyes and nothing to focus on except the smell of disinfectant and the sharp click of nurses' heels passing in the hallway outside his door.

"Just to get this out of the way, I read the report in some detail," she said, and saw Jack's shoulders tense again. "You saved a lot of lives in that explosion."

"Yeah, that's me, a hero," Jack said. His voice was thick with sarcasm. "Maybe they'll give me a medal, Peggy; what do you think?"

"I think I like you better when you're full of yourself. Jack ..." She hesitated, and then she did reach out. He jerked when she touched his hand, brushing her fingers lightly across the top of it to give him a heads-up before she closed her fingers over his. He hesitated, then turned his hand around and clasped back.

They sat like that for a little while, companionably holding hands. Peggy had had years to get over what she had reluctantly admitted to herself was a small and unbecoming crush on her boss, and in particular, she would never have dreamed of hurting Daniel that way. And yet, every time she was near him, she was reminded of it.

.... though, as she had said, she _did_ actually prefer him confident and on top of his world, obnoxious as he could be that way.

As if his thoughts had been running along a similar track to hers, Jack asked, "So how's Mr. Carter handling your sudden departure?"

"If you mean Daniel, he's here," she said. Jack's head suddenly swiveled. "No, not here at the hospital. He's getting our things settled, while I came straight on to see you."

"Seriously?" Jack said. "You brought Daniel too? What is it, the entire entourage? Don't forget the Jarvises too, and their damn flamingo."

"They send their love, actually," Peggy said, and Jack's breath went out in a little huff, halfway to a laugh.

"Yeah, I can really see Jarvis saying that."

"It was Ana, but the sentiment stands." She glanced about at the room, and wondered again how well he was handling all the reminders of the time he'd almost died three years ago. "Have they given you any sort of idea of when you might be released from hospital?"

"They're saying I'll be in 'til tomorrow at the very least." Jack plucked at the sheet over his legs; he didn't seem to notice he was doing it. Peggy took that in, along with his uncharacteristically subdued demeanor, the lines of unhappiness in every part of his body.

"Do you want to get out of here tonight, Jack?" she asked. Somehow, without meaning to, it came out gentle.

"You can make that happen, can you?"

"Watch me," Peggy said.

*

It was very strange, Daniel found, being back in the house where he used to live in LA. The house where he'd wooed Violet; the house where he and Peggy had made love for the first time.

He had never sold the house because there had, for a while at least, seemed to be no need to. His life and Peggy's had circled in and out of LA, and even when they were in DC or New York, it was generally assumed to be temporary.

And then one day it _wasn't_ temporary, and they were putting a down payment on a house in DC and asking themselves why they were still paying property taxes on the one in California. But by that point, it had become necessary for someone to move out to LA to manage the West Coast operations of the fledgling SHIELD agency, which included overseeing Stark's labs. Peggy didn't want someone that she didn't know managing that side of it, so Jack had been tapped for it, and he needed somewhere to live; it just made sense for Jack to move into the house that Daniel no longer needed. Technically, Daniel still owned it, but they had treated it as a sort of atypical rental arrangement, and then made the house a SHIELD asset on paper, an official residence for the West Coast supervisor.

His key even still fit the lock.

But Daniel hadn't been here in over a year, hadn't lived here in longer, and now, as he dropped his bag on the couch after the cab ride from the airport, he found it a deeply unnerving mix of familiar and strange. The furniture was the same; Jack hadn't bothered buying new. But Jack's things were evident wherever he turned, dozens of little reminders that Daniel no longer lived here. There was a picture on the sideboard of a strange couple in stiff antique dress -- Jack's parents? Suit jackets and rumpled shirts were draped over every piece of furniture that would take them, and Daniel had already started gathering up an armload before he belatedly remembered (jet-lagged as he was) that this wasn't _his_ house and these weren't _his_ clothes.

The entire house smelled like Jack's cologne and aftershave, faintly cloying and yet wholly familiar. Daniel left the bundle of clothes on the back of a chair, and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee. Peggy had gone straight to the hospital, while Daniel, for reasons he was now unclear on, had come here -- he'd had some vague idea of making the house ready, but for _what_ , or for who, he wasn't sure. 

Or maybe it was just wanting to avoid Jack until he absolutely had to. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Jack. It was just ... a lot of things, most of which he was too tired to examine right now.

The kitchen was, once again, that uneasy blend of familiar-yet-different. There was a half-empty bag of coffee beans on the counter, and a coffee grinder clamped to the edge. Daniel had always bought Hills Bros' tins of the pre-ground sort. He swept some loose coffee dust off the counter into his palm, figured out how to use the coffee grinder, and started a pot percolating.

He was hungry. Poking through the cabinets and refrigerator, feeling guilty and intrusive, he found eggs and crackers and fruit and peanut butter, and a wholly unexpected box of Red Rose tea bags. Did Jack drink tea? Or keep them on hand in case Peggy visited? Both seemed unlikely. Daniel left them out on the counter for her anyway.

He was at the kitchen table, just finishing a strange midnight lunch of crackers, peanut butter, and bananas, when the sudden slam of the front door had him grabbing for his crutch and reaching for the gun at his hip that he remembered too late was still in his bag.

"No, no, the sill, mind the sill," Peggy's voice said impatiently. "You live here, man."

There was a snappish reply that sounded like Jack, the words too low to make out, and Daniel crutched out to the living room.

"What the heck, Peggy," he said as he took in the pair who had just come in the door, Peggy helping along a pale and much-bandaged Jack. Daniel knew that Jack had been blinded; it was just -- _seeing_ it that was the shock. Jack was in pajamas, with a jacket draped over his shoulders.

"Is that coffee I smell, Sousa?" Jack asked, turning his head. Daniel couldn't find words for a moment; it was just so strange, seeing him moving like that, a questing uncertainty so different from his usual bullheaded confidence.

"You are not having coffee; you're going straight to bed," Peggy said firmly. "I facilitated your escape from the hospital under a few specific conditions, and that was one of them."

"Escape, is it?" Jack muttered. "More like an escape from one jail to another, here."

He reached out a hand in Daniel's general direction. Daniel, not entirely sure what Jack was about, took his hand without really knowing why; and suddenly he found Jack's hand wrapping around his, a strong grip that spoke of wordless welcome.

Between them, without really saying anything about it, they helped Jack to the master bedroom on the main floor, behind the stairs. Daniel couldn't help noticing that it was still the same bed, still the same bedspread, even. Underneath that dark-gold bedcovering, purchased cheaply from Sears when he first moved out here, he and Peggy had --

... okay, this was _not_ an appropriate thought to be having when Jack had been sleeping in the bed for the last year, especially while he and Peggy were helping Jack to bed. Definitely not.

Jack was weirdly pliant, in a way that Daniel had only ever seen once before: after Jack had been shot, when he'd been too weak to get up. This was something different, though. He didn't seem that unwell. He was just ... unsure. Moving slowly, touching things to reassure himself of his position in space.

He let them set him down on the bed, and Peggy briskly took the jacket and then stood holding it for a moment before laying it over the end of the bedframe.

"Jack, do you want anything?" Daniel asked. "A, uh, a glass of water, maybe?"

"Yeah," Jack said. His voice was quiet. "That'd be nice. Thanks."

Daniel went off, haunted by a deep sense of unease. He had to go into the kitchen to find a glass, and caught himself dallying as he filled it. It was just so unspeakably bizarre to see Jack like this, off balance and vulnerable and hurt. It wasn't even that much like the time Jack had been shot, because that time Jack had been belligerent and stubborn from the day he opened his eyes in the hospital, arguing with the nurses and sniping at Peggy and Daniel whenever they came in to bring him case updates.

But he hadn't come all this way just to avoid Jack, so he took the glass of water to the bedroom ... but stopped in the doorway. Jack was under the covers now, and Daniel watched Peggy take Jack's hand carefully and guide it to the pill bottle on the bedside. "Pain medication," she was saying quietly. "Only one every six hours. We can tell you how long it's been. Just pay attention to how many you take."

Daniel cleared his throat gruffly. "Water," he said, stumping over to put it on the bedside table beside the pill bottle. There were other signs of Jack's occupation here, a dog-eared pulp novel and an empty whiskey glass and, almost shockingly, a pair of reading glasses. Daniel found himself staring at those, a strangely poignant reminder that time kept passing. And of course Jack didn't need them right now.

"So we'll just let you sleep, then," Peggy said. She squeezed his arm and trailed her hand down it as she got up. Daniel felt something clench in his chest, watching that. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but it didn't feel like jealousy.

"Thanks," Jack said softly. "Both of you."

Daniel patted his leg awkwardly, underneath the covers, and they retreated and closed the bedroom door.

"So I suppose we'd best see to our own accommodations," Peggy said after a moment.

They went up the stairs, Daniel navigating cautiously. There were two more bedrooms upstairs, one of which was meant to be the master bedroom, but Daniel had taken over the downstairs bedroom as soon as he'd moved in so he didn't have to deal with the stairs on a daily basis. One of his criteria for buying the house, in fact, was that everything downstairs was adjacent and easy to get to. He had almost never been upstairs when he'd lived here.

Peggy opened the door on the room that was meant to be the master bedroom, a large room at the front of the house with the night glow of the city slanting in through the big windows. It occurred to Daniel suddenly to wonder why Jack wasn't using it, why he'd taken over the downstairs bedroom even without having Daniel's handicap. 

Why he'd chosen to sleep in the bed where Peggy and Daniel had slept, even given the choice of sleeping anywhere else.

"This isn't so bad," Peggy said, moving a box off the bed. "It's not made up, but I'm sure there are spare linens somewhere."

"If everything hasn't been moved around, there ought to be some in the hall closet."

There were. In fact, Daniel even recognized those linens. Jack, it seemed, had bought hardly anything of his own, taking over the furnished house as-is. Which, of course, was the practical thing for him to do, so Daniel wasn't sure why he kept obsessing on it, thinking about Jack sleeping under the same linens he'd used when he was here.

... well, all right, he knew why. But it wasn't as if this was even remotely an appropriate thing to be thinking about with Peggy, his _wife,_ right _there._

"Will you be all right with the upstairs bedroom?" Peggy asked, snapping out a sheet over the bed. "You'll have to go downstairs to use the facilities."

"It'll be fine." They had made sure their house in DC was all on a single level for this exact reason. He'd never stopped appreciating how she took his needs into account without ever making him feel pitied or condescended to; it was impossible to be offended by her brisk, matter-of-fact approach to the practicalities of living as he had to. "I mean, if I gotta negotiate stairs in the dark, at least I'm familiar with these particular stairs."

Peggy smoothed the bedspread and sat on the edge of it. She opened her bag and began pinning up her hair, a nightly ritual soothing in its familiarity.

Daniel sat on the opposite side and leaned his crutch against the wall, but rather than going into his own nightly routine, he just watched her, the smooth sureness of her hands, the soft curve of her bent neck. Sometimes he still couldn't believe this woman had agreed to marry him.

His thoughts drifted back to the wedding, as they often did at times like this -- but, this time, it was Jack at the wedding that he thought of.

They had been married at Howard's house in New York. Peggy's parents had flown in from England, and Daniel's passel of cousins were there, as well as Angie and Ana sparkling in flowered dresses, and several of Daniel's work friends looking awkward in nicer-than-usual suits, and Howard being very Howard all over the place.

And there was also Jack, filling his "best man" role to the hilt -- a little _too_ broadly, in retrospect. He had made all the requisite lewd jokes and danced with Peggy, but as the evening wore on, he'd faded from view. Daniel's recollections of him now were patchy: Jack at the edges of things, uncharacteristically quiet. He couldn't remember now when Jack had drifted away. His attention, at the time, had been entirely taken up with Peggy, _his_ Peggy, with laughter in her eyes and flowers in her hair.

But he remembered Jack hugging him, late in the evening -- hugging him much longer and harder than the brief, light congratulatory hug he would have expected. He remembered the rasp of Jack's stubble scraping across his cheek, and the smell of more than a few wedding drinks on Jack's breath. "Good for you two," Jack had murmured, for Daniel's ears alone, and it had been brimming over with a wealth of emotion.

He couldn't remember what he'd said or done next. Probably smiled and clapped Jack on the back and moved on to the next wedding guest. There was just so much going on, and he was so distracted.

But, looking back on it, that was when they'd all three dropped out of touch, more or less. Oh, there were still phone calls and the occasional meeting in DC. With Jack in charge of their LA operations and Peggy running things in DC, there was always business to discuss. But the late nights talking over drinks, the casual lunches ... that had all gone out along with his bachelor days. 

Until today, he would have considered it a simple feature of getting married and moving on to a new phase of his life. Married men didn't stay out at the bar all night. It had never even occurred to him, really, that they'd somehow become estranged. He was simply too busy to give it much thought. But ... he _missed_ Jack, in a way he didn't miss his casual work friends from the old office.

And hearing that Jack had been in an explosion out West: the way the news had punched him in the gut, bringing a stop to all other thoughts, the same way the news of Jack's shooting had, years ago --

"I could use a little help here," Peggy said, and Daniel jerked guiltily out of his memories to the sight of Peggy turning a bare shoulder toward him to display the fastenings on her girdle. He smiled and slid across the bed to undo them one by one.

"You know, I sometimes suspect that you can do this just fine on your own and you're just humoring me," he murmured, as the girdle came away to display the smooth bare expanse of her back.

"Why, Mr. Sousa, what a shocking notion," she murmured back.

They kissed, lingering and slow, but it was unspoken between them that there was no energy for more, not after the day's desperate worries and a cross-country flight and no sleep. Daniel shed his clothes and leg, powdered and dried the stump, and slid into the stiff sheets smelling of laundry powder, a different brand than he used to buy. Peggy rolled over to curl against his side.

Outside the window, the sky was growing light.

Strange to be back in LA. 

And stranger still to think Jack was right there downstairs. 

_Being_ with Jack was never an option, had never been. He could never, _would_ never hurt Peggy that way. But they could be friends, couldn't they? he thought sleepily, drifting, with his fingers tracing meaningless patterns on Peggy's bare shoulder. He would like to still be friends.

*

Jack woke with a sharp shock to darkness, utter and absolute.

Night, he thought dazedly, but it didn't quite feel like night; it was the dizzy sense of timelessness that he remembered from the war, when you'd slept so little and at such odd times that you never really knew what time it was anymore.

Then memory swept in, the lab accident at the Stark test site, where he'd only been because of a routine inspection that he'd expected to cheerfully glad-hand his way through. Instead: yelling, clearing the room, and a blinding white shock, a feeling like being kicked to the ground --

He reached up to feel around the edges of the bandages, and ran a hand across the two days' stubble underneath. The docs said they thought it was pretty likely the damage wasn't permanent, but nobody knew for sure, nobody _could_ know 'til the bandages came off.

And then the _rest_ of it came back to him, along with soft clinking and voices from somewhere beyond the bedroom, and he dragged a hand through his hair and groaned softly to himself.

Peggy and Daniel. Here.

Just what he needed. As if everything else wasn't bad enough.

Still, for a while, despite his growing thirst and need to pee, he lay in bed and listened to the soft sounds from what he was now pretty sure was the kitchen. Appetizing food smells drifted in. Something made Peggy laugh, high and bright, and Daniel replied in a warm murmur.

He wished they weren't here. He didn't want to be having to go through all of this with ... everything with them, too. But lying here, listening to their comfortable, friendly chitchat, he could feel the tension starting to ease out of him. It was nice, even if he didn't want it to be.

Come to think of it, he had a vague recollection of someone bringing him a glass of water last night. Getting back to the house was a blur, but he did remember that. He remembered them both being there, and Peggy leaving a bottle of pain pills on his bedside. He could use one now.

He reached out, and immediately knocked the pill bottle off the nightstand. He heard it hit the floor and roll around, rattling.

Cursing under his breath, Jack sat up. There was a moment of dizziness, but then he felt better, which at least was an improvement over the _last_ time he'd been in a situation like this.

He really needed to stop getting himself laid up. It wasn't his favorite thing.

He found the glass of water by touch, took a sip, then swung his legs off the bed and felt around for the pill bottle with his toes. That didn't work, so he leaned down, which made his head pound and tugged on the burned skin around his eyes.

There was a sudden knock at the door. "Jack?" Peggy said, door-muffled. "Are you awake?"

"No!" Jack said, panicked. "I mean -- I'm not decent." Although he was, as far as he could tell, still wearing pajamas. The last thing he needed was Peggy seeing him groping around on the carpet for the bottle of pills he was fully responsible for knocking off.

"I'm not coming in," Peggy said through the door. "I just wanted to let you know that there's breakfast in the kitchen, or I suppose it's really more lunch, in case you're hungry. Daniel and I will be there." And then she withdrew with quick tapping steps, barely muffled by the carpet.

The woman knew him too damn well sometimes.

He found the pill bottle, took out a pill by feel and swallowed it, drinking down most of the glass of lukewarm water afterwards. Then he got up and felt his way to the door. He carefully opened it a crack. He wasn't sure why he expected more light -- it was as if some part of his subconscious thought that sunlight ought to spill through the open door. It didn't, of course; or if it did, he couldn't see it. He listened for the voices in the kitchen, and when their locations were firmly established, he felt his way to the bathroom and used the facilities. Easier said than done, but at least he didn't need help with this part of it.

Flushing the toilet probably tipped them off that he was awake, but he still spent a little time in the bathroom: ran a wet hand through his hair, splashed on a little cologne for no particular reason except that he figured it'd help kill the smell of hospital and unchanged pajamas. He had the urge to get dressed, but then he started thinking through the logistics of it -- even finding his clothes would be difficult, let alone figuring out if anything went together. He couldn't even bring himself to start.

Instead he opened the door cautiously, and listened for further kitchen conversation. It sounded like they were still there. Okay, that was totally Peggy again, he decided after a moment or two of listening to their seemingly normal conversation about a SHIELD case. She knew he'd want to know where she was, where _they_ were, so he could join them in his own time rather than feeling pressed.

Like having them here didn't press him enough.

He thought about going back to the bedroom and just staying there 'til they left -- he could go a day or two without food, no problem -- and then told himself to stop being ridiculous and man up. Running his fingertips along the wall to stay oriented, he went from the bathroom to the open kitchen doorway. At least, if nothing else, he was familiar with the layout of the house.

"Morning," he said gruffly, and the conversation stopped for a minute; then there was a quick clatter, the sound of a chair being pushed back.

"I'm glad you decided to join us," Peggy said, her voice warm and light. The pressure of her hand on his arm came out of nowhere, first a quick stroke to let him know she was there, then the light but comforting feeling of Peggy guiding his hand to the back of a chair. "Would you like coffee? Daniel tells me it's quite good, though I'm not an expert."

"You have expensive tastes, Jack," Daniel said from somewhere over near the stove. "Want some eggs? I can do scrambled or fried, and that's about as far as it goes."

"Uh ... scrambled is fine," Jack said, feeling his way into the chair. "And, yeah, coffee. Uh. Thanks. Look," he said, managing to scrape together some semblance of their usual give-and-take, "we don't all drink that freeze-dried stuff you like. Some of us made it through the war with actual taste."

"Excuse me if I don't want to spend every day of my life grinding coffee beans," Daniel said. There were small clinking sounds, and Jack found himself trying to follow both of them around the kitchen. The hiss of the burner, the sizzling of eggs -- that was Daniel at the stove. And Peggy was the little clicks and clinks of the coffee things, and the wash of perfume over his shoulder as she bent down to place the coffee on the table.

"You like it with cream, no sugar, Jack?"

"Uh, yeah." It was strangely flattering that she remembered his coffee preferences. But of course, she'd once been responsible for the entire office's coffee tastes. It might be nothing more than that.

Still, he sat there sipping coffee and listening to the little sounds of movement and activity around him -- soaking it up, soaking _them_ up. After more than a year, they were back in his life, and he didn't know whether to be glad or sorry; they'd leave again, of course, going back to their lives -- their shared life -- but they were here now, and that was worth a surprising amount, he found.

"Bacon?" Daniel asked. "Toast?"

"Yeah," Jack said. He hadn't even realized he was hungry, but he definitely was now. His stomach growled.

Peggy touched his hand with the back of her knuckles, then having announced her presence, she moved his hand atop a knife and fork. She was really remarkably good at this, better than he would have expected.

"Daniel and I are just going to go get ourselves cleaned up," she said. "The fire is out under the coffeepot, but it's still hot. Call us if you need anything."

A plate clinked on the table in front of him, and Daniel's hand rested for a minute on his shoulder. He knew instantly that it was Daniel, not Peggy, though he couldn't even have said how he knew; it was a firm pressure that was very distinctly different from the light touch of her hand. And then they were both gone, clattering out in a flurry of heel-taps and the rattle and click of Daniel's crutch.

"Leave me some hot water!" Jack called, needing to get in the last word.

And then he was alone in the kitchen ... so that he could eat without an audience. He was well aware of what they were doing, and didn't want to admit how much he appreciated it. He quickly found that it was easiest to wrap the bacon up in the toast and make a sort of sandwich. The eggs he could shovel in, as long as he didn't much care what it looked like. He wished in retrospect that he'd asked for the eggs hard-fried rather than scrambled, but at least he knew for next time.

When he was done eating, he put the dishes in the sink and felt his way back to the living room. The room was filled with the fresh damp smell of hot water and shampoo that went along with a bath, and he heard Peggy and Daniel's voices upstairs, including soft giggling. This time, it wasn't a performance for his benefit; it was pure couple-talk, the soft light voices of two people who thought they were alone, or close enough. He couldn't make out the words from down here, but he found himself listening anyway, straining his ears to catch little hints that would allow him to construct a physical picture of what they were doing up there. Then Peggy giggled, and he got a picture that was a little too vivid. Hastily, he stumbled along, running his hand over the wall, into the bathroom where he closed the door and shut them out.

And yet he'd also shut them in, because the small space was filled with fresh bath smells. They'd just been in here, one at a time or together -- naked, washing themselves in his bathtub. Jack reassured himself with his fingertips that they'd left the tub empty and clean, and yet, he sat for a minute on the closed lid of the toilet and tried not to think about it. Then, decisively, he ran water into the tub.

At least, unlike the first couple of weeks after the shooting, he could handle this part on his own. He just had to move carefully and keep his face out of the water. He decided to forego washing his hair. And then he realized he hadn't brought any clean clothes into the bathroom, but a quick listen at the door reassured him that Peggy and Daniel weren't close -- it sounded like they were in the kitchen now. With a towel around his waist, Jack ducked into the bedroom and dug out a sweater and a pair of slacks.

He had to laugh at himself, sneaking around his own house trying not to be caught half-naked. Honestly, it was their own fault if they got an eyeful. _They_ were the ones who insisted on inviting themselves for a completely unasked-for visit.

He was back in the bathroom, trying to arrange his hair by feel with a comb, when Daniel's distinctive thump-click approached the open door. "Jack?" he called softly. 

"I'm not an invalid," Jack said irritably. "No need to tiptoe around me."

"I know you aren't," Daniel said, and Jack glared in the general direction of the door. "I was going to ask if you wanted a hand shaving."

"Oh." Honestly, he had no graceful excuse to decline. The prickle on his face was annoying him. And he didn't really want to try to find out what shaving blind was like, even with a safety razor. "Yeah, sure, why not?"

Daniel laughed softly and came into the bathroom. Jack was suddenly, intensely aware of him, even without Daniel quite touching him -- the smell of soap and Jack's own shaving foam, the soft little rustles as Daniel laid the crutch aside and moved up behind him. Jack could feel the heat of Daniel's body.

This was, he began to suspect, a mistake.

"Shove over and let me get to the sink," Daniel said in a warm, playful tone, and Jack tried to roll his eyes and then remembered what a bad idea that was.

"Yeah, whatever," he said, edging to the side. There wasn't much room in the bathroom; he stumbled against the toilet. Daniel steadied him with a hand on his arm.

"I need to warn you that I've never done this on someone else before," Daniel said, and Jack huffed out a laugh.

"If Peggy finds me bleeding out in the bathroom, there's going to be an investigation."

"I promise I won't cut your throat. I'm just not promising there won't be a few nicks."

"That's it, I'm calling Peggy in here."

Daniel laughed. "She'd probably be better at it."

Jack had a suddenly mental image of Peggy leaning in close, her breasts inches from his face, the smell of her perfume as she carefully smoothed the razor over his cheek --

"Nope, you're fine," he said quickly. "In fact, I think maybe I should do this myself."

"If you want to," Daniel said. "If you _don't_ want to, why don't you sit on the toilet lid and we'll see if that's a good angle."

Jack sat. He tilted his head back, and a moment later, Daniel's fingers brushed his jaw and smoothed shaving foam across his skin.

... yeah, so having Daniel do it wasn't an improvement over Peggy after all.

At least the bandages helped hide any expression he might be making. He clenched his teeth and focused on keeping his face as noncommittal as possible. This got harder when Daniel put one strong, warm hand under his chin to hold his face still, and began scraping off the stubble with firm strokes of the razor, up to the edges of the bandage that still covered half his face.

It was all he could do not to just relax into Daniel's hands. In fact, he felt himself doing it anyway, leaning forward like a cat being petted.

This was harmless, he thought. Not like with Peggy, where any touch or movement would be freighted with meaning. A married woman couldn't just shave another man's face. With Daniel it was ... safer. Safe enough to lean into, knowing it wouldn't be taken the wrong way.

Or, perhaps more accurately, the right way.

"Does Peggy ever do this for you?" he asked. Daniel's hands stilled as soon as Jack's jaw began to move, and then remained still for a moment longer before resuming their smooth, sure strokes.

"Sometimes," Daniel said.

Great. Now he was imagining that, with every stroke of the razor: Daniel with his head tilted trustingly into Peggy's hands, the way Jack's head was held in Daniel's hands now. Peggy's sure hand, with the red fingernails, drawing the razor across Daniel's neck, across his cheek ...

Jack swallowed. This really, really wasn't helping.

"Hold on a minute," Daniel said, and Jack seemed to wake up, coming back from a place deep inside his head. He had no idea how much time had passed. Daniel's hands withdrew, and Jack tried to lean after him before he recognized what he was doing, wanting to hold the contact for one moment more. Then the hands were back, smoothing a damp, warm cloth across his face, cleaning away the remaining soap.

"No nicks," Daniel said.

"I'm amazed," Jack deadpanned. He reached up a hand to touch his own face, but it ended up landing on Daniel's instead -- Daniel was still wiping the foam away. And they both froze like that for an instant, before Daniel hastily took his hand away.

"Right, so .... I think we're done here," Daniel said.

"Thanks," Jack said. It seemed like an understatement. He felt relaxed in a way he hadn't since he came home from the hospital. And yet ... bereft.

"Yeah, no problem." There were little rustles Jack couldn't place at first, and then he realized Daniel was doing something with the washcloth -- fussing with it, twisting it maybe. "Your bandages need changing?" Daniel asked.

"Not now," Jack said shortly. They would soon, but he didn't think he could handle that much more intimacy right now. "Leave 'em alone. Let 'em heal."

"And they're going to, right?" Daniel said. "Heal. I mean, Peggy said, the doctors said -- but you'd know better than I would."

Jack snorted a bleak laugh. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Hell," Daniel said. "I ... look, forget I said anything. Sorry."

"It is what it is." Jack put on a smile, boarding himself up behind it. "At least I'm clean-shaven, eh?"

*

Peggy hadn't meant to go by the bathroom while Jack and Daniel were inside, let alone spy on them. Well ... it wasn't precisely _spying._ The door was open. And she was just going upstairs to fetch down her makeup case. But she lingered, briefly, on her way past. Neither of them noticed she was there. They were both wrapped up in each other.

Daniel had mentioned that he was going to help Jack shave. Peggy had lingered in the kitchen, trying hard not to think about that. It wasn't that it bothered her to have Daniel do that for Jack. Far from it. She just couldn't stop imagining Jack's face with the foam, and Daniel's hand on the razor ... the way she had sometimes shaved Daniel, with his head tipped back between her stocking-clad thighs, eyes closed as he relaxed into her touch. The feel of a man's stubble under her hand; the scraping feeling as it was trimmed away, leaving the softness of close-shaven skin behind, silken against her leg as he turned his head to kiss her inner thigh ...

This was not like that, of course. Jack was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, and Daniel stood in front of him, bad leg out to the side to keep him steadier and his hip against the wall; it wasn't a large bathroom. From this angle, Peggy couldn't see her husband's face. But she could see Jack's, even with the bandages hiding his eyes. She could see how every angle of his body leaned into Daniel's touch. And Daniel ...

She knew Daniel too well not to see that he was just as rapt. The tenderness in every stroke of the razor was as obvious as any clue in any case she'd ever worked.

After a moment, she tore herself away, and went quietly up the stairs to finish her errand. But she didn't want to risk interrupting them, so she sat on the bed instead and finished fixing her face there.

It wasn't the face in the compact that she kept seeing, though. It was Daniel and Jack in the bathroom. It was the devotion ... yes, that was the word she was looking for, the care and the affection between them.

She felt as if she should be jealous. But how could she be? She had no doubt of Daniel's fidelity to her. And anyway, if there was infidelity to be spoken of ... hadn't she just been in the kitchen, thinking of the imagined roughness of Jack's unshaven cheek under her hand?

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them as doors closed beneath her, and there were footsteps -- on the stairs, she thought for a moment, but then the back door opened and closed.

This bedroom looked out over the front of the house. Peggy got up and went out into the hall, then into the second upstairs bedroom, more of a storeroom at the moment. From here she could see the overgrown backyard -- it had been like that when Daniel lived here, and it was plain that Jack had no more interest in rehabilitating the weeds and overgrown flowerbeds. 

Daniel appeared a moment later, wandering along the fence. Somehow morning had turned to afternoon without Peggy's noticing, and sunlight slanted across the fence and gilded Daniel's hair.

She didn't want to call to him from up here. Instead, she went quietly down the stairs, past Jack's closed bedroom door, into the kitchen where the remains of their lunch were still spread out. She gathered the plates and put them in the sink before the flies got at them. Then she got two glasses. It was not hard to find alcohol in Jack's house; there was a half-finished bottle of bourbon on the counter, and she recalled seeing another in the living room. Peggy poured each glass half full, and went to the door and stepped out onto the back porch.

There was an unexpected breath of coolness in the air. She remembered that about Daniel's house; somehow it channelled breezes so that the backyard was cooler than it ought to be, even on a hot day.

"Daniel?" she called quietly. 

"Hi, Peg." He didn't seem surprised to see her, but he did raise his eyebrows when she crossed the grass and handed him a glass of bourbon.

"It's nearly evening in DC," she excused herself.

Daniel smiled wryly and raised his glass. Peggy clinked hers to his.

"How's Jack?" she asked, and Daniel started guiltily.

"He's taking a nap. Er ... Peg ..."

He stopped then, uncertainly, and sipped his bourbon. Peggy led the way to a bench, half lost in long grasses, and they sat side by side.

It was her turn, now, to hesitate. She didn't want to give him the idea in word or deed that she had strayed, would ever stray. And yet, she felt he needed to know that he wasn't alone. She just wasn't sure where to begin. There were many men who would not appreciate certain things being implied about their predilections and, consequently, their manhood. Daniel, she thought, was not so fragile as that.

"You okay, Peg?"

"I'm fine," she said, smiling. "I was just thinking ... of the war, actually."

Daniel smiled crookedly. "Don't we all, sometimes."

"Indeed," she said, and sipped the bourbon. It burned pleasantly on the back of her tongue. "I was thinking, in particular, of a young American I knew named Mark."

"Oh?" Daniel prompted, when she didn't go on.

"He was very sweet. He used to write to his sweetheart every night, as many young men did, but he was particularly fond and dedicated, the subject of much friendly and perhaps jealous teasing, especially when she wrote back to him just as assiduously. She was named Sarah, and she lived in Iowa, I believe. Or perhaps Indiana. One of those 'I' states."

"Did he come home to her?" Daniel asked.

"He did," Peggy said, smiling slightly at the memory. "But he was injured quite badly beforehand. Feverish as he was, he thought he might not make it, so he asked me to see his things sent him. That was when he told me about Sarah, whose name was actually Paul."

She glanced at Daniel, who watched her, waiting to see where this was going.

"Sarah was Paul's maiden aunt, you see. They wrote to each other under her name. It was a bit scandalous, perhaps. But Sarah was hardly a stranger to scandal, living as she did with a lifelong female friend from school. She and Paul had always been great friends. She didn't mind Paul using her name as a cover to write to his love overseas."

Daniel leaned into her; his shoulder rested warmly against hers. After a time, he said, "I knew men like that in my company. You know ... they fought just as hard as anybody. Don't think it's fair, exactly, they couldn't put up pictures of their sweetheart above the cot like everybody else could."

"I know," Peggy said softly.

The air was warm and sweet in the backyard, full of the smell of flowers. It seemed an impossibly vivid contrast with the place they spoke of, the mud and violence and death, and the many small cruelties of the war.

"But there was a ... a difference between those men," Daniel said at last, "and ... the ones who just -- there were some, Peggy, who -- there weren't any women there, so sometimes men go looking for affection in each other's arms, at a time like that. Nothing wrong with it."

"No," she said quietly.

"But it doesn't last, Peggy -- it's just _that place._ It's not something that ever would have happened back home. Those men, they come home, and they get married to a nice girl, if they're lucky."

"And they leave it all behind," Peggy said.

"Yeah."

"What about you?" she asked.

Daniel looked at her, and looked away, and sucked in a breath, and smiled. "Yeah. Me. I did that. I shoulda known nothing would shock you, Peg."

"Did you love him?" she asked quietly.

Pain drew a curtain across his face. "Doesn't matter now, does it? I'm married to you."

"Daniel," she said, "I should ask you to think twice if you ever say something like that about Steve."

"Yes, but ..." He drew in a breath. "Yeah. Okay. Yes, I loved him. He died in Bastogne."

"I'm sorry," she said, and reached out and curled her hand over his. "Oh, Daniel. I'm sorry."

He turned his face away. "We all lost people, didn't we? I cared about a lot of other people that died at Bastogne, too. Damn it." He touched his face, wiped at his eyes. "Sorry, Peggy."

"Daniel, you've held me while I cried about Steve. I should be a sorry wife if I wasn't willing to do the same."

He rested his head on her shoulder for a moment. "So," he said at last. "Any reason why this topic just happened to come up today?"

"I saw you in the bathroom with Jack," Peggy said.

She felt him jerk, an all-over flinch. "Yeah, Jack needed my help shaving. I think I mentioned ..."

"Daniel. I _saw_ you."

She thought she might perhaps have pushed too far. He was too quiet, too tense. But then he relaxed slowly, leaning against her.

"Peggy," he said quietly, with a deep, fervent earnestness. "I would never, _never_ dream of being unfaithful to you."

"I should certainly hope not."

"Sometimes men have fantasies. It's a thing that happens. It doesn't mean anything."

"Women do too, you know."

"Yeah?" he asked. "What do you fantasize about, Peggy?"

And here it was. The moment of truth. The moment when she would learn if she'd read him all wrong, if she was about to blow up all their love and all their trust on a moment's honesty.

But she would not be anything less than honest. Not again.

"Jack," she said.

Daniel sucked in a breath. There was a silence that seemed to wait for an answer, hushed in the golden late-afternoon air.

Then Daniel gave a soft, chuffing laugh.

"God, Peggy, he's _gone_ for you. Didn't you know that?"

Peggy jerked away and turned to stare at him. Her voice, when she spoke, seemed to come from some distance away. "He's what?"

"Jack? He has a crush on you a mile wide. The office used to gossip about it all the time. You really didn't know that?"

"No," Peggy said. She looked down at the nearly-empty glass of bourbon in her hand. "I didn't."

"I had no idea you didn't know," Daniel said, looking at her in surprise. "I always assumed -- well, after I went to LA, I figured there was about even odds that the next time I heard from you, you'd be having little Thompson babies."

"Daniel!"

He laughed, looking embarrassed. "Look, Peg, after you -- after we -- I thought you must not have felt the same. Obviously. But he sure didn't get over you."

"Didn't he?" she asked in a small voice. _Oh. Jack._

"Who would?" Daniel said matter-of-factly. "You're _you,_ Peg."

This made her laugh, but then she sobered. "He's quite gone for you too, from what I saw in the bathroom."

"What?" Daniel said, startled.

"You and Jack."

"Yes, I ... Peg, nothing happened. Nothing _ever_ happened. You gotta take my word for that."

"I didn't mean to imply it," Peggy said. "No more than it did with Jack and myself. But it _is_ mutual."

"You and Jack, huh?" Daniel said. "Is it mutual there too?"

"A deft deflection."

"Which you didn't answer."

Bollocks. "You know," Peggy said, "for a group of people who are detectives by vocation, we seem to be rather bad at this."

They sat quietly for a short while, hand in hand, as the shadows grew and the light turned deeper gold and then pink. 

"Jack pulled away after the wedding," Daniel said quietly. "I didn't really notice at the time, but I was thinking about that today."

"I hadn't noticed either. But you're right. Little wonder, if he'd had his heart broken." _Twice over,_ she thought.

"Yeah, but we wouldn't -- we didn't -- we'd never have asked him to," Daniel said irritably. "That idiot. It's not that we didn't want him around."

"No, but he'd have thought so, don't you think? Anyway, perhaps he wouldn't have wanted friendship anyway, if he'd been nursing romantic feelings for ..." And then she stopped; she wasn't sure whether to drop her or Daniel's name into that gap.

"Both of us," Daniel said.

" _Can_ someone, do you think? Two people, at once?" But then she thought immediately of Steve. Loving Daniel had not diminished those feelings in the slightest. It was just that one was her past, and one was her future.

"Ask about me and Violet sometime," Daniel said. "Anyway, didn't we just establish that both of us have been nursing along the same sort of feelings for him?"

"Yes, but that's --" And she didn't get any farther with that. Because it _wasn't_ less than what she felt for Daniel; she couldn't pretend it was. Even if she might have said so at an earlier time in her life. She had never seriously examined her feelings for Jack; she had never really considered a relationship with him, and then she and Daniel were together by the time the feelings were such that it might have been a possibility, otherwise. And then she and Daniel had been married, and then ...

And then Jack had been injured, and she and Daniel had immediately dropped everything and flown across the country to be with him. There hadn't even been any discussion about it. By the time she'd gotten on the intra-office phone to talk to Daniel about it, he was already arranging a flight for both of them.

"Oh, _bollocks,"_ she said with feeling.

"I love it when you curse in British."

"We're going to have to talk to him about it, aren't we?"

"Probably a good idea," Daniel said, and added cautiously, "Just to be clear, did we just now ... er ... establish that we both might be ..."

"Considering Jack as a romantic prospect? It's done, you know," she said. "In some circles."

"I remember when I first got to thinking about my romantic future, and I thought I'd meet a nice girl and marry her and everything would be simple," Daniel said. "I should have known."

*

Jack had slept, and felt better for it, though he still didn't know what to do with the way that he woke up disoriented, having no idea what time it was and no way to find out except by asking someone. Maybe he could take the glass face off a clock, he thought as he lay in a muzzy, drowsing state. That would work, wouldn't it? He could tell the set of the hands by the feel.

He sat up and stretched. Peggy and Daniel were still in the house; in fact, it was oddly like earlier, the two of them talking quietly, little clinks and rustles as they moved about. This time, they were in the living room.

Jack peeled himself off the bed and went to find out what they were up to. Their conversation hushed when he came out of the bedroom, running a hand along the wall to keep track of where he was. "Hey," he said. His brain was still fuzzy from the nap; he was probably due for a pain pill, but it wasn't that bad and he'd rather not add the pain-pill haze on top of the rest. "Is it morning or evening?"

"It's evening," Daniel said. "Come over here and sit. We were just discussing dinner. You can get in on the conversation."

Jack felt his way around the end of the couch. There was a swift rustle and a wash of perfume as Peggy rose from wherever she was sitting and did the same thing she'd done before, a light hand on his arm, guiding him down to the couch seat. 

"Drink?" she asked, and Jack nodded, so a moment later a cool glass was pressed carefully into his hand.

"Neither of us feel like cooking," Daniel said, "so Peg was thinking one of us could run out and get something from Angelo's -- I used to pick up their pot roast and bring it back when I lived here. Maybe the steak sandwiches, something easy to eat with your hands. It's right down the street. Sound good?"

"I could eat that," Jack said cautiously.

"Great!" There was a brisk clicking of Daniel's crutch. "Gonna go do that then. See you guys later."

"Wait -- Daniel!" Peggy sounded alarmed. The door closed. "Bloody coward," she muttered under her breath.

"Lover's quarrel?" Jack asked.

"Not what you're thinking." She was still leaning on the back of the couch he was sitting in -- not touching him, but near, and warm. "Jack, do you need any help with your bandages? Last night the nurse said that they should be changed tonight."

Damn it; she was too good with details. He had to stop himself from reaching to touch his face. Damn things itched like hell. "It can probably wait 'til tomorrow. Can have someone come over from the hospital in the morning."

"Or," Peggy said, "I can give you a hand now, and we will never speak of it again."

Jack snorted. "Okay, fine, fair enough."

He found the edge of the coffee table, left the bourbon glass there, and got up, pointedly making it clear that he didn't need help for this part, at least. He was actually finding the house decently easy to get around in. He knew the layout well, and so far he hadn't had to deal with anything more complicated than putting on his pants. Like, say, cooking. Or shaving.

He could still feel the warmth of Daniel's skin against his. God, Peggy doing the bandages was going to be just as bad. At least, knowing Peggy, he could relax in the knowledge that she would probably be as brisk and businesslike about it as possible. 

"What did we do with that bag?" Peggy asked. "The nurses gave us some things to take home for you. Oh, I think I must have put it in the bedroom. There was so much to-do last night."

"Where do you want me?" Jack called, while she thumped around, opening and closing drawers.

"In here, probably," Peggy said. "The bedroom, I mean. Sit on the bed. I'll bring in a bowl of water."

He felt his way to the bed and sat down, listening to Peggy's small, busy rustles as she moved about. It was oddly pleasant to picture her: setting the bowl of water down, moving toward him ... she laid a towel around his neck. Then --

" _Ow!_ Jeez, Peggy!"

"It hurts less if you rip it off quickly," Peggy said without notable sympathy.

"Says who? Ow! I think you took some skin with that!"

"Oh, don't fuss," Peggy scoffed, but she peeled off the other side with more care.

"What are your credentials as a nurse, exactly?" Jack asked as she began dabbing with a wet cloth at the skin around his eyes. He flexed his jaw and refused to ask how bad it looked. "Working a welding rig during the war, was it?"

"I'll have you know I did in fact have experience at field medicine in the war."

"Did any of your patients survive?"

"I had quite forgotten the complaining from your recuperation before," Peggy said, but she was very gentle as she dabbed around his eyes.

"Yeah, well, I'm starting to think it was for the best that we had someone come over from the hospital to change my bandages after the shooting."

"Sit here for a minute, I need to find the ointment," Peggy said, with a smile in her voice.

He had been trying to hold his eyes closed while she worked on them, but he couldn't resist the urge to painfully crack them open, and sucked in a breath.

"What?" Peggy asked, alarmed, turning back. And he _saw_ her turn back -- she was blurry, but he could easily see the bright flash of her lipstick and the blue dress she wore.

"I can see you," Jack said, breaking into a wide, helpless grin. "I can _see_ you. They said it'd come back if I let my eyes rest, but --" He broke off with a small gasp, shocked to find that he was worryingly close to tears. 

On some level, he hadn't actually believed that he'd get his sight back.

But it was mostly back already. The damage was mainly around his eyes, to the lids and the skin. The lamplight was too bright, but then, he'd had his eyes covered for almost two days now.

"It's coming back," he said hoarsely.

"Of course it's coming back, you foolish man," Peggy said, the deep gentleness in her voice belying her words. She knelt in front of him, between his legs, bringing her down to his level and in fact slightly below -- it was about their height difference when they were standing. Up close, through a splintered kaleidoscope of involuntary tears from the light (at least, that was his story and he was sticking to it), he could see her even better than the dim blue-and-brown shadow he had initially glimpsed standing by the lamp. She was smiling, her eyes crinkled up, and there was a red clasp in her hair the same shade as her lipstick.

It was suddenly almost more than he could do not to lean forward and kiss her. _Daniel's wife, Daniel's wife,_ he chanted in a litany in his head. He would never hurt Daniel like that, _never._

But instead, Peggy leaned forward and kissed him.

It was the briefest of kisses, a dry brush of her lips to the corner of his mouth. It might also be chaste. Sisterly, even. At least he tried to tell himself that. He could taste the bourbon on her lips. 

"Jack?" she said, alarmed, as he pulled frantically away.

"I ..." He sucked in a breath, and then he was suddenly angry, furious even. "I can do it myself," he said, reaching out without even seeing what he was reaching for. How dare she take his triumph in this one moment and do _that_ with it. "Give me -- no -- I've got that --"

"Jack!" Peggy said, exasperated, as they ended up in a tug-of-war over the gauze. "I have to put the ointment on. Jack -- will you listen for a minute --"

"You need to leave," Jack snapped. "Right now."

"Jack, listen --"

The front door slammed, and Jack panicked completely. "Out!" he yelped, and started to lurch up, as if Daniel could see what they'd been doing right through the wall with X-ray vision like Superman's. What if he had a smudge of lipstick on his mouth? He'd never know!

"What's going on in here?" Daniel said from the doorway. Jack caught a blurry glimpse of Daniel in tan slacks and one of those appalling tropical shirts, holding a large bag, and then wrenched his gaze away.

"Daniel, you're back just in time," Peggy said, sounding relieved. "You can help me explain."

"You haven't told him a thing, have you?"

"I was going to!" she protested. "Jack, Daniel and I thought it would be easier if we talked to you one at a time. I'm just going to ... take these into the kitchen." She swooped in and took the bag from Daniel.

"What was that about cowardice earlier, Peggy?" Daniel called after her. "What was it?"

"Can't hear you, the refrigerator is quite loud, you know!"

Daniel moved quietly through Jack's limited field of vision to examine the scattered first-aid supplies. "What happened here?"

"What happened is -- nothing. Give me that."

"Jack," Daniel sighed, and sat beside him on the bed. "Turn your face toward me. Is this ointment supposed to go around your eyes?"

"Guess so," Jack said. He kept his eyes resolutely screwed shut as Daniel's warm fingers smoothed the ointment soothingly across the burned skin. He didn't want to open them, because Daniel was _right there,_ and the way this night was going, Daniel might kiss him too, and then where would he be?

"So what did Peggy say, exactly?" Daniel asked as he worked.

"What do you mean? Uh, she accused me of complaining and told me she'd worked as a nurse during the war. Which I don't believe, by the way."

Daniel sighed deeply. "I might have known. Look ... Jack ... Peggy and I were talking about you earlier."

"I'd be shocked if you could resist the temptation," Jack said lightly, but somewhere in his chest, a small flutter of eagerness, of hope, flared to life like a long-banked coal. "To talk about me behind my back, I mean."

"Funny you should use that word," Daniel said. "Temptation. Look ... Jack ... I've seen the way you look at Peggy, all right?"

"I wasn't doing anything with Peggy!" Jack yelped.

"This is your idea of telling him?" Peggy said from the bedroom doorway.

"At least I'm telling him! 'I was a nurse during the war' -- Peg, _really?"_

"I don't know what's happening," Jack said, somewhat helplessly.

The bed dipped under him as Peggy sat on his other side. "Let me have the ointment," she murmured, and Jack was aware of Daniel's arm crossing his chest, handing it across. "Jack," she said, as her smooth, strong fingers began to stroke the tingling-cool ointment across his brow and around the corner of his eye, down the side of his face. "What Daniel and I were discussing earlier is that we like you."

"Yeah, I figured that out," Jack said. His screwed-shut eyelids began to relax under the steady, stroking pressure. "Seeing as you came all the way across the country and everything."

"No, not that. Jack." She half-laughed. "We've all been tiptoeing around our feelings, afraid to speak of them. Jack .... 'like' isn't the word I want. Not really."

Daniel leaned into his side, his warm shoulder settling against Jack's. "We know you took off after the wedding. Look, man ... what we're telling you, it doesn't go farther in this room, and it doesn't have to go any farther than this conversation, if you don't want it to."

"It's in no danger of that," Jack said, although the small match-flame of hope in his chest had flared up brighter. "Seeing as I still have no idea what you're saying at all."

"Jack ..." Peggy huffed out another of those exasperated little laughs. "We _love_ you, Jack."

There was a feeling he'd felt a few times in his life, the feeling of his life making a sudden sharp turn, swerving from a long-anticipated road to point somewhere entirely different. It had happened in Okinawa, at the pull of a trigger. It had happened in Belarus, when Peggy sat down next to him in a cargo plane's window, and after the span of a conversation he would have followed her to the ends of the earth. It happened with Vernon, with the sensation of all other paths closing off, and in the muzzle flash of a gun in a hotel room in this very town.

And it happened now, that sudden rearranging, the deep-down visceral disorientation as the long lonely highway of his life abruptly rerouted onto a much curvier, more appealing side road. He couldn't see what was ahead, but every road sign was full of promise.

"I think we broke him," Daniel said, his voice laced through with a grin.

"Jack?" Peggy asked, and even knowing it wasn't a good idea, he cracked his eyes open again, so he could see what was happening with her face. It was close to his, and she was smiling.

"Yeah," he said dazedly. He turned to look at Daniel, who was grinning at him; even without being able to see him clearly, Jack could see the warmth and affection shining in his face. "Yeah, uh -- what was the question?"

"The question is whether you'll hold still while I get these bandages back on," Peggy said.

"I don't know, is it going to feel like taking them off did?" Jack asked, managing to rally enough for a semi-automatic snipe back. But he held still, and tried not to clench his teeth as the bandages closed over his eyes, sealing him back into darkness.

"Hey," Daniel murmured. He had a hand on Jack's shoulder, and leaned his temple against Jack's, cheek to cheek. "You'll get it back. You could see me and Peggy just now, couldn't you?"

"I know," Jack said. He took a slow, shuddering breath. "Tell me the truth, how bad is it, really? How does it look?"

Daniel laughed a little. "You _would_ be worried about that. You look fine, Jack."

"There are some red patches still," Peggy said, pressing bandages down. "But it doesn't even look like the damage to the skin is that bad. There may be a little scarring, but I can't imagine it'll be that noticeable."

Relief made him dizzy, and in that dizziness, he blurted out, "So I, uh ... I guess it's probably not going to get me in trouble if I admit that Peggy kissed me earlier, huh?"

"How much earlier?" Daniel asked.

"Daniel," Peggy scoffed. She had finished with his face, and now there were little rustles as she cleaned up.

"I'm just saying, you could at least have waited for me," Daniel said, and Jack's breath caught in his chest. "Oh damn, I think we broke him again."

"I think you're doing it on purpose," Jack said breathlessly.

"Am I?" Daniel asked through a clearly audible smile, and his lips brushed the corner of Jack's mouth.

But Jack was ready for him this time, damn it, and he turned his head sharply. His aim wasn't the best, but he was a _good_ kisser, dammit, and he got Daniel's lip in his teeth and got a hand on Daniel's shoulder and then curled it into Daniel's hair -- and he'd been fantasizing about this for _years,_ since even before Peggy showed up at the SSR.

Pigtail-pulling. Jack had always been bad about it.

Peggy made a small sound, and then leaned in, and her breath brushed Jack's ear when she spoke. "Are you planning to monopolize him all evening, Daniel?"

"Me?" Daniel managed to say, when Jack let him go. He sounded out of breath. Jack grinned, and turned and caught hold of Peggy with every intention of repeating the performance. He didn't get a chance to initiate because she quickly closed her mouth over his. It was more combative than kissing Daniel, but every bit as much fun, and her lips tasted just as good as he'd always suspected.

"Well, he's certainly a quick learner," Peggy gasped out when Jack let go. He wished he could see her, with her normally tidy hair in complete disarray -- he'd scrubbed his hands through it thoroughly enough that it couldn't possibly still be in its usual well-coifed arrangement ... but they had existed like this in his imagination for so long that he could supply every detail anyway. 

And he would get plenty of chances to look at them when the bandages came off. 

All the chances in the world.

They fell back on the bed, the three of them, laughing and kissing indiscriminately, as if a floodgate had been opened, a tide of pent-up feelings unleashed. Jack was dimly aware the other two were being scrupulously careful of his bandages, but _he_ didn't care; he couldn't get enough of them, of either of them -- the softness of Daniel's hair and the light scruff of his stubble, the sticky sweetness of Peggy's lipstick and the rasp of her nylons against his thigh.

Abruptly, out of the tangle, Daniel sat up and said, "There are steak sandwiches from Angelo's in the kitchen."

"So?" Jack muttered, his hands buried in Peggy's hair and her lips pressing kisses to his neck.

"So? They were hot when I brought 'em home, fresh off the grill, rare and leaking juices and the best damn thing you've ever had. I haven't missed Angelo's steak sandwiches for the last year to let 'em sit on the table and get soggy."

Peggy laughed into Jack's skin. "Could you eat, Jack?"

With them? With them he could do anything. He wouldn't mind staying here on this bed forever, but at the same time, he _was_ actually hungry, and not sure that things could go any further in his present condition than frantic necking anyway. He was still tired as hell in spite of the afternoon's nap.

"Yeah, sure," he mumbled, and Daniel curled an arm around him and helped him sit up, while he was aware of Peggy rolling away from him and sitting up too. "Yeah, okay, let's do that, and then let's do more of this."

Peggy broke into a laugh, warm and full of joy, and Daniel struggled off the bed to his feet, and then his hand closed around Jack's. "I think that's safe to say," he said, and helped him up.


End file.
